Meter Change

Gerry1

Jonboy_1984 said:

Where the more modern ones do win is they have a fan that runs on peak supply to extract more heat when you want it, this does need an extra supply cable added at point of install.

You can often use a single 24h supply, but then the risk is that poor programming means that you don't shadow your meter's low rate times accurately and you waste £££s by unwittingly charging at day rate for part of the time.

GoneWestWoman

Hi, I had EXACTLY this issue last year and fought hard with The Ombudsman to get some kind of resolution.  After 11 months they eventually sided with me and I was paid £800 compensation for the financial impact of not being able to heat my home or use my cooker etc apart from during the 7 hours of the economy 7 l tariff I was put on.  Don’t give up the fight!  But be aware that 7 months on I still can’t find any supplier which supports E10 on a SMETS2 smart meter.  My situation is slightly different in that I have an electric boiler with normal “wet” radiators NOT storage heaters so the only time I can run my central heating is in the middle of the night.  I survived but am still scarred by the experience of explaining time and time again to so many officials why the error made by the supplier was not as simple as just “losing” 3 hours of affordable energy.  Dreading this 2nd winter of no heat after 07:00 even though I have not touched the compensation award because I will need it to pay the higher bills (it’s paid into the electricity account, not into your bank).  I’m still trying to sort out the mess and have been told that I have no alternative other than to just accept their error. All the new tariffs are geared towards heat-source pumps which I simply cannot afford to put in.  My boiler is only 8 years old.  Octopus have refused to put me on a suitable tariff despite creating one which would work (Cosy Octopus).  Good luck and don’t give up.

Spoonie_Turtle

AnnieRichards said:

Hi, I had EXACTLY this issue last year and fought hard with The Ombudsman to get some kind of resolution.  After 11 months they eventually sided with me and I was paid £800 compensation for the financial impact of not being able to heat my home or use my cooker etc apart from during the 7 hours of the economy 7 l tariff I was put on.  Don’t give up the fight!  But be aware that 7 months on I still can’t find any supplier which supports E10 on a SMETS2 smart meter.  … I’m still trying to sort out the mess and have been told that I have no alternative other than to just accept their error. …  Octopus have refused to put me on a suitable tariff despite creating one which would work (Cosy Octopus).  Good luck and don’t give up.

I think I remember your thread.  Did the Ombudsman say anything at all about putting you on a more suitable tariff to put you back in the position you were before?

GoneWestWoman

No, they just sympathised with me and said they had no way of forcing any supplier to have a suitable tariff.  So although I was compensated for the financial impact during 2022/23 there is no way at the moment of moving to a suitable tariff unless I change the whole heating system.  Which I simply cannot afford to do - also the property is rented and the Landlord has said he will be expecting me to pay him some compensation if I move out
because any new Tenant will be paying so much more for their energy because of Octopus’ error.

QrizB

AnnieRichards said:

... the property is rented and the Landlord has said he will be expecting me to pay him some compensation if I move out
because any new Tenant will be paying so much more for their energy because of Octopus’ error.

Your landlord might have strongly held opinions on this, but he is not entitled to demand compensation. If he persists in doing so you should get advice from eg. Citizens Advice.

The electricity meter does not belong to him, or to you. The meter is the responsibility of the energy supplier and they are at liberty to replace it. Any replacement by any supplier will have been with a smart meter and would have resulted in the current situation.

Suppliers have been given targets for replacing all non-smart meters by 2025, with fines if they don't meet these targets. You will inevitably have lost your old meter.

EssexHebridean

AnnieRichards said:

No, they just sympathised with me and said they had no way of forcing any supplier to have a suitable tariff.  So although I was compensated for the financial impact during 2022/23 there is no way at the moment of moving to a suitable tariff unless I change the whole heating system.  Which I simply cannot afford to do - also the property is rented and the Landlord has said he will be expecting me to pay him some compensation if I move out
because any new Tenant will be paying so much more for their energy because of Octopus’ error.

Had your LL done a bit of basic research and not been so daft as to fit a wet electric heating system then there wouldn't be such high heating costs in the first place! Maybe he should be compensating you for the fact that he decided to fit one of the most costly-to-run systems out there into the property in the first place?! 

Kid_Icarus

This problem of Economy 10 forced obsolescence is only going to get worse over the next 7 months - many E10 meters are Radio Teleswitch meters (we have 2 different types of E10 meters in a block of flats I manage, all are RTS meters, plus various E7 RTS meters in another block).

If you are not aware, the Radio Teleswitch system is due to be shutdown on 31st March 2024, unless this deadline is extended (it has already been extended several times, and the cost of maintaining the RTS system has ballooned according to Elexon).   There are, as of May 2023, just under 1 MILLION RTS meters installed across the country:

This is going to cause numerous problems - a) it may not be actually possible for the industry to replace them all in time, b) if the RTS shutdown goes ahead as planned with large numbers of RTS meters still in operation - this MAY, depending on the operation of the meter - cut off heating/hot water for many people, right at the end of winter and c) for consumers with E10 RTS meters, it is going to effectively force a changeover from E10 to E7 when their meters are replaced with smart meters which many consumers will be unaware of, resulting in cold homes/running out of hot water during the evenings for potentially tens or hundreds  of thousands of homes (the graph above does not differentiate between E10/E7 - many RTS meters will be on E7 tariffs).

So if you have an E10 meter that is also an RTS meter - you need to start thinking about this and doing something about it now.

QrizB

Kid_Icarus said:

If you are not aware, the Radio Teleswitch system is due to be shutdown on 31st March 2024, unless this deadline is extended ...

Has already been extended to December 2025. See:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6468237/econ-7-radio-teleswitch-service-turn-off-delayed-again

Kid_Icarus said:

This is going to cause numerous problems - a) it may not be actually possible for the industry to replace them all in time, b) if the RTS shutdown goes ahead as planned with large numbers of RTS meters still in operation - this MAY, depending on the operation of the meter - cut off heating/hot water for many people, right at the end of winter and c) for consumers with E10 RTS meters, it is going to effectively force a changeover from E10 to E7 when their meters are replaced with smart meters which many consumers will be unaware of, resulting in cold homes/running out of hot water during the evenings for potentially tens or hundreds  of thousands of homes (the graph above does not differentiate between E10/E7 - many RTS meters will be on E7 tariffs).

a) The industry is currently fitting about a million meters a quarter, total, and has something like 20 million to exchange. In principle it could prioritise RTS meters and swap them all before the current shut-off date; in practice, I suspect there will be some "de minimis" number of unswapped meters that will be tolerated.

b) The number of stuck meters should be small; RTS systems have an internal clock and the radio signal is supplementary. I guess there could be some where the internal clock has failed and it's only the radio signal that's keeping them going?

c) This is almost inevitable. I suspect that most E10 systems will be adequate on E7 most of the time, although (like AnnieRichards' wet heating) there will be edge cases. Long cold spells could be a challenge, especially if eg. storage heaters or HW tanks have been skimpily sized for E10 and are inadequate for E7.

Gerry1

As I've previously flagged up, that undated article provides no references and is tosh, to put it politely.  A writer who confuses the box containing the company fuses with a Radio Teleswitch is obviously far less clued up than Mr. Magoo*.

(*An unfunny TV cartoon series, thankfully defunct, that mocked those with impaired sight and appealed to the sort of people who would watch bear baiting, cockfighting and bullfights.)

QrizB said:

Kid_Icarus said:

If you are not aware, the Radio Teleswitch system is due to be shutdown on 31st March 2024, unless this deadline is extended ...

Has already been extended to December 2025. See:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6468237/econ-7-radio-teleswitch-service-turn-off-delayed-again

b) The number of stuck meters should be small; RTS systems have an internal clock and the radio signal is supplementary. I guess there could be some where the internal clock has failed and it's only the radio signal that's keeping them going?

Again, that's been debunked for domestic RTSs: they always keep going happily during R4LW outages.  There would be widespread unreliability if domestic RTSs had relied on instaneous 'Change to Peak Rate Now' commands; some distant RTSs would fail to decode the 8:30am command  -  the signal in daylight is often likely to be much weaker and iffier than at 1:30am when it's pitch dark.

Similarly, there would have been easy opportunities for fraud, just wait until the Night Rate had kicked in, then screen the RTS and get Cheap Rate forever !

GoneWestWoman

Whatever the reason for metering changes/breakdowns/technology the whole industry is completely ignoring the fact that there are tens of thousands of us who live in rural areas with no gas supply and our only way of heating our homes is via electricity.  If you don't have storage heaters (new or old) then Economy 7 is simply not a suitable tariff and there are NO alternatives

I have tried warning several different potentially interested parties (MP, Martin Lewis, MoneyBox - radio4 - OFGEM, The Energy Ombudsman, Citizens Advice etc.) whilst I fought my corner with Octopus Energy and none of them give a fig!  

I simply can't understand why Octopus Energy won't allow us to join their Cosy Tariff which gives 2 cheap rates of electricity per day with a higher rate during Peak hours - 4-7pm,  which could work for those of us unable to replace our systems.  The only other Supplier who provided new customers with the E10 tariff have been taken over by OVO who informed me that anyone currently on E10 would have no choice but to be put on E7 when they swap those customers to their own database.  A ticking time bomb which I'm sure none of those customers are aware of until they receive their first bill!!

I have just come off the E7 tariff with Octopus and gone for a non-fixed flexible one which is currently saving me £1 per day, but that's before I have to turn the heating on.  However it's 7.5p per kilowatt hour cheaper than the E7 day rate and only 14p more kwh than the night rate.  When I have to turn the heating on that's going to make a huge difference because I obviously won't be using my heating between midnight and 7 am which is the only time I could have got the cheaper rate.

Apart from profit I simply can't see any reason for one of the big energy suppliers not to be willing to provide an alternative to E10.  After all, they can write tariffs willy nilly for anyone lucky enough to be able to afford an Electric Vehicle?!  We are obviously not worthy ^_^